Comparison between empirical and physical models of the topside ionospheric-plasmaspheric electron content above Antarctica

Abstract

As the polar regions are Earth’s windows to outer space, the Antarctic continent provides a unique opportunity for scientific research that cannot be performed at mid-and low-latitude regions. Moreover, the polar ionosphere-plasmasphere system, especially over Antarctica, is not well understood as compared to other regions due to a lack of experimental observations. Consequently, one of the present challenges of the Space Weather community is to better characterize the climatological behavior of the polar ionosphere and plasmasphere separately in response to variations in the solar activity at high latitudes.